Sermons

Celebrate the Journey

The Once and Future Church

175th Anniversary Sunday

John Wilkinson                                 Third Presbyterian Church  May18, 2003                                         Acts 8:26-40

“Do you understand what you are reading?” “How can I, unless someone guides me?” This story from the earliest church’s history has caught my attention and my imagination. This is the post-resurrection church we are considering, the “now-what?” church called to spread the gospel beyond the local environs of Jerusalem.

Jesus has ascended. New leadership has been chosen. Pentecost has happened. A new church is being born. The first followers are persecuted.

Philip, one of the seven chosen to spread the story, receives a vision from an angel to take a journey on a wilderness road. Philip listens to the angel, and while traveling, encounters a stranger. Much is made of this stranger’s identity. He was, to say the least, different. A court official of the Ethiopian queen, what William Willimon calls a “powerful, though exotic, court official, well-placed and significant.” (Interpretation Commentary, page 72)

The angel becomes a little more proactive – “go talk to the guy,” or something like it. Philip does so, and notices that the Ethiopian is reading the Bible, from the prophet Isaiah.

And then this glorious encounter. “Do you understand what you are reading?” “How can I, unless someone guides me?” What proceeds from there is a rather intensive biblical tutorial about the good news of Jesus. A pool of water conveniently presents itself and a baptism is celebrated. Philip disappears to share the story elsewhere and the Ethiopian goes on his way, rejoicing to be sure.

Why the attention and why the intrigue? This story is about telling the story, and it would appear that of the infinite number of biblical possibilities we could consider this morning, that the Spirit has chosen this one.

This morning marks the conclusion of Third Presbyterian Church’s celebration of its 175th anniversary. To be accurate, we are well into our 176th year, but who’s really counting?

A remarkable series of events, starting slowly and building to a crescendo this weekend, including a terrific party last evening at George Eastman House, has allowed us to remember, to welcome back old friends, to party, to sing and to pray, to look at lots of old pictures, to literally and symbolically “celebrate the journey.”

There are entirely too many people to thank this morning. Many names, but not all, are listed in the bulletin. They include hundreds of church members and an extraordinary church staff, led by a committee chaired by Janet Reed.

No one knew exactly what we were getting into, and for the moment, mention of a bicentennial celebration in 2027 will draw only the faintest of smiles. Nonetheless, it has been a grand experience, and more so, I pray, a gracious opportunity to tell the story once again, as we have looked back in order to look ahead.

“Do you understand what you are reading?” “How can I, unless someone guides me?” This morning’s conversation really focuses on that instant between question and response. In the moment when Philip poses the question and the Ethiopian composes his response, we gather.

As we have said, the past is prelude, in each of our lives to be sure, but certainly in our life together. And your past in this place may represent decades, or a few years, or even more recently than that. It makes no difference in this moment, and in every moment to come.

This morning’s sermon title is borrowed from a book, now more than a decade old, by church guru Loren Mead. Mead’s premise will come as no surprise to us: that American religion is undergoing a dramatic paradigm shift, affecting nearly every aspect of church life, and, by extension, congregational life. We know that. Bookshelves are filled with titles to that effect: Vanishing Boundaries, The Restructuring of American Religion, Beyond Establishment, Reinventing American Protestantism.

Whether we know it or not, people have been studying us, and places like us. And what they have noticed is change, and they have not always been sure that it’s been good. Much of the language has been about mainline Protestant decline, decline in numbers and in influence.

At the same time, however, I like to remember the title of another book, a classic in American church history. Sidney Mead called the story of which we are a part A Lively Experiment. I’m not ready to give up on that quite yet. That’s the paradigm shift Loren Mead suggests, the “future” of the “once and future church.”

If the church in the United States, if the church in upstate New York, in Rochester, if the church, even, called Third Presbyterian, has been about a pioneering spirit on a mission frontier, then that is most assuredly what our future is about. And how exciting is that?!?!

How exciting to be part of this ongoing, lively experiment?!?! Like the wilderness road faced by Philip, like the wilderness roads certainly faced by our Third Church forbears, gathering at the river, crossing the river, making bold and risky decisions about being the church and doing the church – here we are again.

The future is our mission frontier. A new denominationalism, a new and challenging Rochester context, a new understanding of the ingredients of our faith. It would all seem to call for a new set of ideas. And so it does. And yet. And yet this is never an entirely new conversation for us.

The context for service, for mission and ministry, will always be changing. But this wondrous story we have been given to share is timeless. We are its stewards and there are hungry, curious, searching people waiting to hear it, within and beyond our walls.

I would like to invite us to imagine what this future church might look like and then think a little more about how we might live into that vision.

I am inveterate list maker. I make lists on the backs of envelopes, McDonalds napkins, Wegman’s receipts. Here is one such list, a list of pairs of attributes, complementary qualities for our future story-telling church.

We will be Biblical and experiential. We will gather around the word of God and then use all the creativity and imagination that God has given us to interpret that word and live it out as the needs of this generation demand.

We will be Presbyterian and ecumenical. We have been part of the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition from our very birth, and I continue to believe that though beleaguered at times, including by controversy and conflict at the present time, the tradition is alive and has much to offer to ourselves and to a world in need. And yet, as Miroslav Volf suggests, “every local church is a catholic community because all other churches are a part of that church, all of them shape its identity” (Exclusion and Embrace, page 51) We are connected beyond our Presbyterian connections, and as denominationalism redefines itself, so will the ways we live out our calling in the broader body of Christ.

We will be radical and traditional. Those are not mutually exclusive. The great stories of our past, including Lilian Alexander’s call for women’s ordination and the Friends of FIGHT saga, could not have happened had we not had a traditional church as a base and foundation. I believe in the tradition of a place like this, but I am not a traditionalist. I believe in transformation through tradition, and I believe whatever bold things we do in God’s good future will be done, in part, because of their connections to the past.

We will be cultural and counter-cultural. That might seem a little odd, but perhaps not. H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture reminds us that our part of the Christian tradition is called to transform the world around us, neither embracing it fully nor rejecting it absolutely. We live in that complex middle place, where civic institutions can serve the common good, where our jobs can serve as vehicles of grace, where God is God seven days a week and not just one.

We will be united and diverse. Perhaps the biggest shift in thinking about the American church has been the acceptance that a local congregation can become merely a contractual union of individuals, and not an organic body. What can we do to mitigate against that trend, to make connections, to build community? And what can we do to build our diversity within this body? GLBT people, building every day on our More Light commitment? People of color? Old and young? Suburban and urban? Life long Presbyterians and brand new seekers to the faith? Families and households of every constellation?

We will be pastoral and prophetic. We can be both, dear friends, and need to be, and are called to be. John Calvin’s great image was of the church as “mother,” a gentle nurturer who then urges her child to leave the nest to meet the world. The gospel we have received is both tender and tenacious – and we are invited to live in both those realities.

And two more, which are presumed throughout. We will be evangelical and hospitable, qualities that should permeate every activity and every decision we make.

The newly enthroned Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams writes that “The one great purpose of the Church's existence is to share that bread of life; to hold open in its words and actions a place where we can be with Jesus and to be channels for his free, unanimous, utterly demanding, grown-up love.” That’s not a bad mission statement for us as well.

And for a moment may we think of the ways we might do that, how we might enact – or more accurately – continue to enact these sets of qualities. There’s a great line in the movie “Bull Durham” (the lone baseball reference today!) that says that baseball is a simple game: you throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball.

Well, in that light, church is a simple game as well: you tell the story, you hear the story, you share the story. This is what we do, have done, and it seems that we don’t particularly need a radical structural re-framing. This is, therefore, what we will continue to do.

We will worship – with heart and soul and mind. Worship that takes the tradition in word and music very seriously and worship that is responsive to ever-changing human need and forms of expression. Worship and music, supported by an expanding consideration of all the arts, that touches us and challenges us, drawing us ever deeper into the human community and into ever greater connection with God’s spirit.

We will reach out. Emil Brunner once said that “the church exists for mission as a fire for burning.” Outreach is what the church should do and what this church has done. The faithfulness of our future would see outreach in such a central way, with more and more involved in many ways. How we care directly for our neighbors, how we care for a community where violence and disparity of resources seems like the acceptable status quo, how we seek to change systems, how we make connections beyond our immediate geography, how we make peace and justice a value in our commitments here and there and everywhere.

We will educate, and I believe that that’s the right word. Education for our children, our youth, and a growing commitment to adult learning, lifelong learning. Ours is a teaching and learning faith. Let’s remember that, for every age and every station in life.

And we will nurture and care for one another, and for those who are joining our family. We are laboring hard to increase our pastoral presence in all kinds of situations, and particularly in moments of crisis. New fellowship groups are bubbling up. I really do think that this is one of our leading edges, that in a world defined by spinning apart we sense a need for connection, for community, for coming together.

Now again, there are no surprises here. We need to give attention to and nurture all of these areas, to think creatively and boldly, to involve people at all levels of our common life, to seek to build a ministry that is integrated and holistic and that might attract those wonderful people out there who have even yet to discover us.

And through it all, we will need to manage the resources to support this vision, including financial resources, and we will need to give all the tender loving care we can muster to this facility, this place, this bricks-and-mortar vehicle where such holy things happen day in and day out.

But this is a celebration sermon and not a strategic planning session. This is rather about the story than about an organizational chart. Somehow, as Monday dawns, and the next day and the next, we might think, though, about how we attach the values of this place, the vision of our history, to what we do, connect who we are called to be with how we are to be the church in such a time as this.

Which takes us back to Acts and that breath-taking interchange. “Do you understand what you are reading?” “How can I, unless someone guides me?” There was the church in that encounter, in that moment between question and response, in an unexpected opportunity on a wilderness road, a little human ingenuity, a little openness on both sides, and a lot of divine inspiration to empower the moment and its participants, to make it a journey worth celebrating.

Rowan Williams asks, “What do I pray for in the Church of the future?” His answer is “Confidence; courage; an imagination set on fire by the vision of God…and thankfulness. The Church of the future, I believe, will do both its prophetic and its pastoral work effectively only if it is concerned first with gratitude and joy”

Perhaps that can be our prayer as well. Confidence and courage and joy.

In a poem called “The Little Gidding,” T. S. Eliot writes: “We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.”

That is the journey we celebrate. Past as prelude. Memory as window to the future. 175 years. 9100 Sunday mornings, and, need I add, a similar number of sermons. 64,000 brand new days, brand new invitations to seek the light.

All of it a kind of dress rehearsal for whatever is to come, life and death moments and everything in between. And we who are citizens of the once and future church are blessed to live in this sacred moment, this thin place between past and future.

Happy anniversary, Third Presbyterian Church, by the grace of God, and for all the saints. With bold accord, come celebrate the journey now, now, and praise the Lord. Amen.